As a parent of the field, 'Lou' Kriesberg is the academics’ academic, who has written more widely about key issues of theory and research in the field than probably any other scholar. While his regional interests have clearly focused mostly on the Middle East, he has also written penetrating pieces about the Cold War and about Central Europe. His less regionally focused works have ranged from studies of the sociology of the military, through the dynamics of de-escalation to issues of the timing of peace moves.
Kriesberg trained as a sociologist at the University of Chicago in the aftermath of the Second World War, and then went on to teach at Colombia, taking with him a then unfashionable interest in issues of the nature and [social] causes of conflict and war, and of the obstacles to peace. In those early days, much attention was being paid to political and psychological aspects of war and peace and much less to sociological explanation. So it took some time before Kriesberg found himself in the mainstream of conflict analysis, even after he arrived at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in Syracuse University which was to be his institutional base for many years and where he was the founding director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflict [PARC].
Kriesberg’s literary output on the topic of conflict, peace, and war started in 1973 with the publication of what was quite the best text book in the field in the 1970s and 1980s, The Sociology of Social Conflicts, reissued in a revised edition in 1982 under the simpler title of Social Conflicts. Together with Joseph Himes' book, Conflict and Conflict Management, these two works encapsulated the best that was then known about the causes and likely course of conflicts between classes, ethnic communities, and identity groups. Kriesberg's focus on these topics became increasingly relevant in the 1990s as classical inter-state conflicts began to become less prevalent and be replaced by protracted intra-state conflicts, such as those within the former Yugoslavia and throughout much of Africa and the former Soviet Union. His influence spread partly through his 14 year editorship of the yearbook he founded, Research on Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change [1978-82].
During the 1990s and early 2000s Lou Kriesberg turned his attention to more specific topics, and wrote about the increasing prevalence of “protracted and intractable” conflicts, speculating fruitfully about the dynamics that kept such conflicts constantly “on the boil” and resistant to all efforts to end – of even modify – them. His other theme became the idea that conflicts could have beneficial results if handled appropriately, a focus to be found in his work Constructive Conflict Resolution, a much used text in the increasing number of post-graduate courses and degrees that were developing in the US and in other countries.
In recent years, he has become a benevolent father figure to a whole generation of younger scholars and has every claim to be a leading parent for the field.
CRM/JB
